How a McCain family photo becomes a political defense
We wrote the other day about the presidential campaign of Sen. John McCain preparing for any subversive attacks in South Carolina by forming a "truth squad" of supporters who will pounce on any rumors, push-polls or erroneous claims or mailings.
The preparations come from a painful lesson in 2000 when the Arizona Republican came roaring out of a 19-point win in New Hampshire and ran into an unfriendly conservative environment in South Carolina where some opponents employed dirty tricks, including spreading rumors that McCain had fathered a black child.
But, it turns out, there's another proactive preparation the McCains are taking this time around. They are actively mailing out thousands of copies of a photograph of Cindy McCain cradling their "black" daughter, Bridget, a dark-skinned orphan the McCains adopted from an orphanage of Mother Teresa's in Bangladesh in 1993. The couple have worked actively to promote adoption by others since then.
-- Andrew Malcolm
You can follow this conversation by subscribing to the comment feed for this post.
Andrew Malcolm's immigrant parents repeatedly stressed the importance of active participation in a democracy. Early lessons included learning the alphabetical list of states by watching televised roll calls of national political conventions. That childhood exposure led to a lifelong fascination with politics, including 40-plus years of covering them and a brief stint practicing them as press secretary to Laura Bush in 1999-2000. A veteran foreign and national correspondent, Malcolm served on the Times Editorial Board and was a Pulitzer finalist in 2004. He is the author of 10 nonfiction books and father of four.
Johanna Neuman is a veteran Washington correspondent for both The Los Angeles Times and USA Today, having covered presidents and politics as far back as Ronald Reagan. A former president of the White House Correspondents Assn., she authored a book on media and foreign policy, “Lights, Camera, Wars.” Most recently she was co-author of the 
Subscribe to this Blog
